Tools for regulated gene expression in Enterococcus faecalis are extremely limited. In this report, we describe the construction of an expression vector for E. faecalis, designated pCIE, utilizing the PQ pheromone-responsive promoter of plasmid pCF10. We demonstrate that this promoter is tightly repressed, responds to nanogram quantities of the peptide pheromone, and has a large dynamic range. To demonstrate its utility, the promoter was used to control expression of the toxic peptides of two pa ...[more]

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Project description:Tools for regulated gene expression in E. faecalis are extremely limited. In this study we describe the construction of an expression vector for E. faecalis, designated pCIE, utilizing the PQ pheromone-responsive promoter of plasmid pCF10. We demonstrate that this promoter is tightly repressed, responds to nanogram quantities of the peptide pheromone, and has a large dynamic range. To demonstrate its utility, the promoter was used to control expression of the toxic peptides of two par family toxin-antitoxin loci present in E. faecalis, parpAD1 of the pAD1 plasmid and parEF0409 located on the E. faecalis chromosome. Results demonstrated differences in the modes of regulation of toxin expression and in the effects of toxins of these two related systems. We anticipate that this vector will be useful for further investigation of par TA system function as well as the regulated expression of other genes in E. faecalis. Overall design: Examination of cellular effects of toxin FstEF0409 at two different levels compared to unexposed cells and comparison of the effects of the two related toxins FstEF0409 and FstpAD1. Average of two biological replicates.

Project description:Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are ubiquitous throughout bacterial and archaeal genomes. TA systems consist of a stable toxin that inhibits growth and a labile antitoxin that prevents toxicity of the toxin. Here we made an artificial TA system (arT/arA) and performed a DNA microarray study for overproduction of the toxin. arT was overexpressed in Escherichia coli BW25113 and compared to the empty vector.

Project description:The previously uncharacterized proteins HigB (unannotated) and HigA (PA4674) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 were found to form a type II TA system in which antitoxin HigA masks the RNase activity of toxin HigB through direct binding. To determine the physiological role of HigB/HigA in P. aeruginosa, a whole-transcriptome experiment was performed for the higA antitoxin deletion mutant of the PA14 strain compared to the wild-type PA14 strain. The rationale was that for the strain that lacks the antitoxin, the effect of the toxin could be discerned due to enhanced activity of the toxin. Furthermore, toxin HigB reduces production of the virulence factors pyochelin, pyocyanin, swarming, and biofilm formation. Overall design: The higA mutant of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 compared to the P. aeruginosa PA14 wild-type

Project description:Bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems (TASs) are thought to respond to various stresses, often inducing growth-arrested (persistent) sub-populations of cells whose housekeeping functions are inhibited. However, it is not always clear whether specific targets of orthologous RNAse toxins are responsible for their phenotypic effect, which has made it difficult to accurately place the multitude of TASs within cellular and adaptive regulatory networks. Here we show that the TAS HigBA can promote and inhibit bacterial growth dependent on the dosage of HigB, a toxin regulated by the DNA damage (SOS) repressor LexA in addition to its antitoxin HigA, and the target selectivity of HigB’s mRNA cleavage activity. HigB reduced the expression of an efflux pump that is toxic to a polarity control mutant, cripples the growth of cells lacking LexA and targets the cell cycle circuitry. Thus, TASs can have outcome switching activity in bacterial adaptive (stress) and systemic (cell cycle) networks. DNA binding of the antitoxin HigA and the SOS regulator LexA was analysed by chromatin immunoprecipitation-deep sequencing, and found to overlap at only one locus, the HigBA TA system promoter